Mario Bava's Baron Blood (1972)

Title: Baron Blood (1972)

Director: Mario Bava

Writer: Vincent Fotre

Stars: Elke Sommer, Joseph Cotton, Massimo Girotti

Review:

On this film Mario Bava wanted to go back to making the old gothic horror movies that he worshiped and loved so much. By 1972, he’d already made a slasher or two (Bay of Blood (1971) for example) and he wanted to go back to those types of horror films he’d made in the past. Films like Black Sunday (1960) and Black Sabbath (1963), both of which were tributes to old Universal monster movies and basically, old school horror films in general.

The story revolves around a young man who decides to go and search out his family roots. So he visits a Castle in Vienna which belonged to an old ancestor of his; the bloodthirsty torture loving Baron Otto Von Kleist know to all for the many victims he tortured under his reign of terror! This evil Baron was cursed by a witch to an eternity in the darkest pits of hell. Unfortunately, through the use of a magical parchment and some magic incantations, the evil Baron can be brought back to life! Which is what our two protagonists do. By mistake they resurrect the evil Baron, joking around with the parchment and the magical incantations, thinking it’s all a lot of silly superstition. Unfortunately for them, the incantations were real! And so the Baron comes back to life to continue with his bad habits of torturing people. Can the Baron be stopped? Will he ever get sent back to the fiery pits of hell?

"Excuse me, are these the try outs for the new Freddy Krugger movie?"

This movie has its moments, but I doubt it’s an accurate representation of Bava’s genius behind the camera. Don’t take that the wrong way because there’s lots of good things to be seen in a mediocre Bava movie. For example, this movie has the lush atmospheric visuals that Bava is known for. He plays around a lot with lighting techniques on Baron Blood. There are a lot of streaks of light coming out of backgrounds, and lots of play with shadows and light. Speaking of shadows and light, the mysterious Baron Blood is kept in shrouded darkness for practically the whole movie. All we see is a glimmer, a dark blot, a shadowy figure moving about in silhouette. In this way the titular Baron reminded me of characters like The Phantom of the Opera and Sam Raimi’s Darkman (1990). You know, tragic characters hiding behind hats and trench coats.

Baron Blood has all the ingredients necessary to make an interesting character, unfortunately, he isnt really fleshed out and is reduced to running amongst the shadows of the castle. He's kind of a Vlad the Impaler type of guy. Everyone feared him because of his love of torture and murder; he is portrayed as a sadistic individual. His resurrection sequence brought to mind the resurrection of the evil Igor Javutich in Mario Bava’s own Black Sunday (1966). And this is something that Baron Blood is known for. Apparently Bava quotes himself a lot on this film, repeating images and situations from his previous films. Baron Blood himself is compared to the cloaked killer in Blood and Black Lace. There is a sequence in which Baron Blood uses an Iron Maiden-like coffin to kill one of his victims, just like the Iron Maiden-like mask seen in Black Sunday. In fact, after a character is killed in the Iron Maiden, we see his face and it looks just like the face of the witch in Black Sunday, a face filled with holes due to the effects of the Iron Maiden. Connoisseurs of Bava might instantly recognize the repetitiveness on this film. Are these signs of wear and tear in Bava’s directorial career? Was Bava running out of ideas and therefore repeated many things he’d done in the past? You be the judge. But we need to keep in mind that Baron Blood came real late in Bava’s career. He was as they say, on his last legs. And like many horror directors during their last days, Bava wasn’t at his best by this stage. Three more movies after Baron Blood,  and Bava's long fruitful career was over.

 

My main problem with Baron Blood was that it had many interesting elements going for it, yet it failed to be a great movie. The film was shot in a real life castle in Vienna which was a perfectly spooky and atmospheric for the story to unfold. We have the story of the resurrection of an evil supernatural entity. We have Iron Maidens, witches, and yes…even zombies! But unfortunately, all these elements do not add up to an exciting motion picture. To me the real problem with this film was its pacing; the film is way to slow! And for a movie about a character called Baron Blood, there is very little blood on this film! Save for a scene in which we see blood coming in through the cracks of a door, there isn’t much blood on this flick. Even the body count is low as hell. I wished they would have made the Baron a more formidable foe. I wished he would have been portrayed as a more interesting character. Unfortunately all the Baron does is run around the shadows, scaring Elke Sommer until she passes out.

Story wise, the movie could have gone in a more interesting route. Unfortunately, the film is just about the evil Baron being resurrected, him killing about three people, and then being sent back to hell. The story is so simple; you can tell some scenes are just there to stretch things out. Some scenes go absolutely nowhere which is kind of infuriating for me. One example of this is one scene where a clairvoyant invokes the spirit of the witch that put a curse on the Baron. This is an interesting scene because we see this witch come out of the fire, talking to us "from beyond the grave". After this ghostly apparition helps the protagonists, they leave. But the clairvoyant is visited by the Baron himself. But we never know what happens to the clairvoyant after she gets a visit from the Baron. Was the clairvoyant killed by the Baron? Did she use some magic to protect herself against him? Sadly we never know what happened for all we see is her covering herself with her arms and Bava cuts to something else entirely, never returning to that scene! What happened there? I wanted to know! Signs of wear and tear in deed.

One of the most visually interesting moments in the film

This film counts as Elke Sommer’s first collaboration with Bava; the second one was Lisa and the Devil (1974). She is not hard on the eyes I can tell you that! With all its flaws and slow pacing, Baron Blood can still end up being a rewarding watch. Even though it’s slow paced, and the story is paper thin, the film is drenched in Bava’s signature atmosphere and beautiful imagery, so at least it has that going for it. Unfortunately it sins by being boring, and I can honestly say its not one of Bava’s best.

Rating: 2 ½ out of 5

 

The original title translates to: "The Horror at Nuremberg Castle"

Lisa and The Devil (1974)

Title: Lisa and the Devil (1974)

Director: Mario Bava

Starring: Elke Sommer, Telly Savalas, Alessio Orano

Review:

I’ve only recently discovered Mario Bava movies by watching two of his best and earliest efforts. Black Sabbath (1963) and Black Sunday (1960) both of which I immediately fell in love with. Two great gothic Italian horror mastepieces that I urge everyone out there who hasn’t had the pleasure of seeing to do so as soon as possible. Your missing out on some spooky good fun! So here I am, on my journey to see all of Mario Bava’s films. Lisa and the Devil caught my attention because of its premise. A girl being harassed by Satan, Telly Savalas playing the devil, a spooky mansion in the middle of nowhere, intrigue, murder, suspense, all the proper ingredients for a night of spooky fun. So how was Lisa and the Devil?

The story for this film is about Lisa, a tourist visiting Italy. Her tour guide takes her to see a fresco of The Devil. A painting depicting Satan carrying a dead guy off to the afterlife. She seems transfixed by the painting. Suddenly, she decides to abandon her tour group and starts to wonder off through the city. Her wandering leads her to an antique shop of sorts where she encounters a man. A strange man dressed in black who carries around a very life like mannequin. Is it a mannequin? Or could this possibly be the devil carrying off the dead to the afterlife? Suddenly, Lisa finds herself lost in the middle of the labyrinthine city streets! She cant find her way back to her tourist group! Day turns to night and she’s still wondering through the city streets, so she decides to hitch a ride with some strangers, who’s car unfortunately breaks down in the middle of nowhere! Now Lisa is forced to spend the night in a spooky old mansion, with the mansions Contessa and her son. Will they survive the night? Will Lisa ever get back to her normal life?

Right from the get go, you get the vibe that this movie isn’t going to be your regular run of the mill Bava movie. There’s just something off about the movie, something strange about it. Once you start seeing Lisa and the Devil, you kind of notice right away that Bava was purposely going for something different. I tried to pin point exactly what it was that was making this movie such a strange and challenging experience to watch and I came to a couple of conclusions. Number one, Bava was trying to tell this story in a very off kilter fashion, he was shooting for something different. The angles and the takes are never what you might expect; you really have to focus on this movie to stick to its story line. At times, it feels like Bava is deliberately trying to confuse you or catch you off guard. If you don’t pay attention, you might get lost during Lisa and the Devil. This is one of those movies were you have to try and notice and remember certain key visual references in order to keep up with the story. The movie does not spell things out for you.

Dream sequences get extremely trippy on Lisa and the Devil

Another thing I noticed was that Bava was aiming to make a film that felt very much like a dream. Once Lisa gets lost in that maze of Italian streets and ends up in the spooky old mansion, it’s all weirdsville from there on in. You are never really sure of anything that you are watching. At times I wasn’t sure if a certain character was a ghost, or not. If a certain character was evil or not. This movie had that strange uncertainty to it, and ambiguity to it that I must admit I enjoyed. Kind of felt like an episode of The Twilight Zone in that way.

After a while, I felt like Bava was trying to make a romanticized version of Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho (1960). Once Lisa arrives at the mansion, she meets Max, the one and only son of the Contessa, the owner of the mansion. The relationship between mother and son echoed that of the one seen in Hitchcock’s Psycho. You know, where the mother is the one in control over the son’s life. She’s very jealous of her son, even to the point where she doesn’t want him to fall in love with anyone. The fact that Mario Bava offered the role of Max to Anthony Perkins, who played Norman Bates in Hitchcock’s Psycho lets us know that this is partly what Bava was aiming for. But this movie wasn’t just going to be Bava’s version of Psycho. There is a lot more to Lisa and the Devil then that. It’s also about a family cursed with death, darkness and despair and in this sense the film also reminded me of those old Roger Corman movies like The Fall of the House of Usher (1960). That was a film about a cursed family with a dark past living in an isolated mansion, just like the one seen in Lisa and the Devil.

Bava had a two punch of success with Baron Blood and Twitch of the Death Nerve, both of which made money at the box office. So producer Alfred Leone gave Bava free reigns to do whatever the hell he wanted with Lisa and The Devil. The problem with this movie was that once it was finished, producers thought it was just too weird. No one wanted to buy and distribute the movie because it was deemed a hard sell. I get it. It’s true. The film is weird, and maybe its not a straight forward horror movie. But the film also has its attributes. It’s a beautiful film to look at. Its different, surreal, nightmarish, and it still remains its horror element. Maybe it didn’t really have enough horror to it. Producers were probably expecting some sort of blood bath they could sell, instead what they got was a horror film that focuses more on romance and melodrama. So be ready for that. Lisa and the Devil has a lot of romance for a horror film, which kind of brings the horror element down a couple of notches. But it never stops being weird and surreal. It certainly is a strange film to try and categorize, and I can see why it gave producers a hard time. Its slow paced, its weird, its horror elements are toned down a bit, and these are really not negative points in my book.

Bava was just trying to do something different. It felt to me like a very atmospheric, romantic, strange horror movie. But studios don’t care for strange and unusual, they want something that the masses can consume easily. Spoon feed them with stupidity. As a result, Alfred Leone, this films producer took the film, re-edited it, shot some new scenes with a new story involving Lisa possessed by the devil and released it under the new title The House of Exorcism. This version of the film changes the story completely, and makes it about Lisa getting possessed after she looks at the devils fresco in the streets of Italy. It has scenes of Lisa tied up to a hospital bed, being examined by doctors and priests. Ultimately, the film has an exorcism scene. It’s quite obvious from looking at this new version that they were just trying to cash in on the success of The Exorcist (1973) a film that as we all know also dealt with a girl possessed by the devil and which was met with incredible success at the box office.

The re-edit of the film made it into a cheap rip off of The Exorcist (1973)

House of Exorcism is not a film that I recommend watching. It takes everything that Bava tried to make with Lisa and the Devil and destroys it. Where Bava was trying to do something different, surreal and at the same time beautiful with Lisa and the Devil; The House of Exorcism went in the complete opposite direction and tried to make it into a cheap rip off of The Exorcist. Right down to having Lisa spewing all sorts of profanity at a priest after she vomits on him. I mean, honestly, House of Exorcism is a travesty in my book. I’m not gonna say that Lisa and the Devil is for everyone, because it isn’t. It’s a strange film with a strange vibe to it. Its kind of hard to follow, and becomes a bit convoluted at times. But I enjoyed it, its like a puzzle you have to try and figure out, and if you enjoy this kind of film, you will more then likely feel compelled to see it more then once. As for the films weirdness, what a boring world it would be if there were no daring filmmakers out there trying to do something different!

Rating: 3 ½ out of 5

Black Sunday (1962)

Title: Black Sunday (a.k.a. The Mask of Satan) (1960)

Director: Mario Bava

Stars: Barbara Steele

Review:

Black Sunday was Mario Bava’s official directorial debut. He’d worked as a director in a couple of films before he made Black Sunday, but they were never His films. He started working on these pre-Black Sunday films as a cinematographer, but most of the time he ended up directing the films himself because the original director would abandon the project for whatever reason. He ended up half directing four films this way, among them the vampire movie I Vampiri (1956). Bava did such great work on these that he was given the chance to direct his first official film. It ended up being the gothic masterpiece Black Sunday. So, how did Bava do on his first film as a full fledged director?

The story for Black Sunday is centered on an evil witch/vampire named Asa. She and her brother Javutich are 100% Satan worshippers. They love the guy and are more then willing to bring you into their own Satan worshipping club. Problem is that the catholic inquisitors aren’t okay with that so they capture Asa and her brother Javutich and prepare to burn them at the stake! But before they do this, they hammer a mask on to their faces that has spikes inside of it! Then they bury her and her brother in a special tomb so that they can’t ever escape. Fast forward 200 years later, and two curious passers by stumble upon both graves while traveling through the woods. Will the evil witch and her brother be released from their slumber? Will Asa and Javutich execute their long awaited revenge?

First off, I have to say that this film has one of the most awesome opening sequences on any movie, EVER! Seriously, if any more horror coolness could be jam packed into those first fifteen minutes; my DVD player would have burst into satanic flames! I loved that whole sequence where they are about to burn Asa and Javutich alive! It’s all about the spooky looking woods, the dialog coming from the evil witch and the equally evil looking catholic inquisitors! I mean, these guys are supposed to work for the church right? But they look so evil dressed in these black robes with hoods over their faces! The good thing about this opening sequence is that it immediately lets you know what kind of film you are up for! If you cant take these first fifteen, you are in the wrong movie my friend!

Its fairly obvious that Mario Bava was trying to do his own version of Dracula, because this film feels very much like Universals Dracula. Switch Barbara Steele with Lugosi and you’ll see they are pretty much the same movie story wise. Not style wise because Bava’s film is so much richer in that sense then anything Universal ever cooked up, with the possible exception of Bride of Frankenstein, Universal best monster movie in my opinion. There are of course a couple of things that make Black Sunday different from any Universal or Hammer film. Number one, when you watch a film like Black Sunday it doesn’t feel as silly as the old Universal Studios Monster sometimes did. No matter how many times I watch those old Universal Monster movies, I can’t help to notice how silly they can be, specially when it came to its more watered down sequels like Daughter of Dracula. Its like they werent even trying to be scary. Bava’s Black Sunday does have its fair amount of cheesiness (that giant vampire bat was the only thing that tainted the movie for me) but it has this serious tone to it, its not softening the horror elements like Universal Monster movies did. Bava’s Black Sunday is trying to scare you, it deliberately amps up the horror element as far as they could take it. Well, at least for the 1950-60s. This movie must have been so shocking to audiences back in those days! One look at the first 15 minutes of Black Sunday and you know this film isn’t playing around. When that mask gets hammered onto Asa’s face, you know this film isn’t playing games. Another scene that I found absolutely terrifying was Javutich’s resurrection! Awesome in deed! Kind of makes you wish they made movies like this again.

Something I greatly admire about these old school Mario Bava horror films is the genuine artistry involved in them. I have seen my fare share of Hammer Films and I couldn’t help but notice how some of the sets are obviously sets. I mean, you can tell they are made out of wood. This is not something that either Black Sunday or Black Sabbath suffer from. The sets look so solid, so realistic. If you see a fireplace Black Sunday it won’t be just any old fireplace, you can bet your ass it’s going to have some cool looking stone gargoyles engraved around it or something. The cobble stones look like cobble stones, the dungeons look like they are really made of ancient stone. I mean, I loved that about this movie. There’s a real effort to make these sets look freaking awesome. Your eyes will just eat it up if you appreciate this sort of thing in a movie. It makes the illusion that much more real to me. Art direction in Black Sunday was top notch.

I really admired how much of the story Bava can tell without any dialog whatsoever. He showed complete control over his story telling abilities, and this was his first official film! I was amazed at all these sequences that were moving along without a single line of dialog being spoken. Yet the intensity, the suspense and the horror of the moment were left intact, or at times even augmented by the use of sound effects and the music. My hats down to Bava for doing this so well. Conjuring up these frightful images and moments and marrying sight and sound so well made this one of the best horror films I have ever seen. This of course speaks volumes of Bava’s inherit ability to tell stories. They guy can really weave an interesting yarn that’s for sure. There are some moments on this film where you could just taste the fear and the suspense. The supernatural is made so real in this movie! There is one scene where one of the main characters is following a ghost, but he doesn’t know it’s a ghost…until he reaches the ending of the tunnel. Wow, what a spooky scene!

I cant go without saying something about Barbara Steele’s awesome performance as with Asa. Steele didn’t have this goody little two shoes look to her, she had a mean look to her and was perfect for playing villains in films. Its all in that look, that stare! I have to salute her here because she plays two diametrically opposing roles. One is the evil with/vampire Asa, and the other is the good natured descendant of Asa. She has a strange kind of beauty to her and well, was perfectly cast in this movie. According to Bava she wasn’t easy to work with, but he stuck with her because she really does look the part.

This film has been so influential on lots of modern day directors. While watching it, one can immediately see where Sleepy Hollow came from. When you see Sleepy Hollow’s horse carriage sequences in the woods; the scenes where Ichabod Crane’s witch mother is placed in the Iron Maiden by her religious zealot father one thing becomes abundantly clear: Tim Burton definitely saw Black Sunday quite a few times before making Sleepy Hollow. Its no surprise Burton has been quoted as saying that Black Sunday is his favorite horror film. Can’t say I blame him. If there’s one bad thing I can say about the movie is that at one point it suddenly becomes a love story, and it looses its horror vibe. But this interim doesn’t last very long. We get right back on the horror band wagon and things move along excellently. Another thing I found a bit off is that at times, specially during the films last frames, it felt like some scenes needed to have a musical score in them but didn’t. Something was missing in there, specially during some fighting sequences. These are really the only reasons why I didnt give this movie a perfect score.

Black Sunday was a huge success when it was released in Italy and in the United States. This film was such a huge hit in the United States that it became American International Picure’s biggest money maker ever! Even though they had edited about three minutes of gore and dialog! The version I saw was unedited, it had all the gooey blood and satanic dialog that Bava originally intended it to have, so of course I was having a blast while watching it. Any horror fan that hasn’t seen this film yet should make it a top priority. To me both Black Sabbath and Black Sunday are the best representations of what a good Italian Horror film is, and I have seen a lot of Italian horror films! This is a master at work here; don’t miss it!

Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5

Spanish release poster. The title translates to "The Mask of the Demon"

Black Sabbath (1963)

Title: Black Sabbath (1963)

Director: Mario Bava, Salvatore Billitteri

Stars: Boris Karloff, Michele Mercier, Mark Damon, Susy Andersen

I should hang my head in shame for not having seen Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath before. But, as I’ve said a few times before on this blog, it’s for gems like this film that a film fan lives for. I had no idea I was missing out on such a great filmmaker. I think I left Bava in the back burner because when a horror fan sets out to watch the best of Italian horror films, one usually starts by the more talked about horror directors like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci. Why Mario Bava isn’t mentioned more is beyond me. His films are definitely underrated. Black Sabbath is an anthology made up of three different horror stories. They go as follows:

The Telephone - A story about a beautiful young woman who starts receiving phone calls from a murderer. He says he is going to kill her before the night is over. She is horrified so she calls her lesbian lover to comfort her. Who is this unseen killer? And will he get to these girls?

The Wurdalak - This story is about a vampire who comes home to his non vampire family. Slowly but surely, he starts turning his whole family into vampires or ‘Wurdalak’s’ as they are called in this story. Will the Wurdalak turn his whole family into vampires or will he be stopped in time to save them?

The Drop of Water - This is the story of a nurse who has to prepare the corpse of a dead medium, who died while she was still in a trance with the dead! While preparing the corpse for burial, she notices the dead woman has an expensive piece of jewelry on her finger. She steals it and takes it home with her! What will the price be for stealing from the dead?

So these three stories make up the film, which is tied up with an introduction by Boris Karloff, where he warns us about how frightening and horrifying the film we are about to watch is going to be. Then after the three stories are over, Karloff returns to tell us to be careful when we leave the theater, cause there’s lots of horrors waiting for us out there in the real world as well. The ending reminded me immediately of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain. When you see both films you’ll see why.

But one cannot talk about Black Sabbath without mentioning how beautiful the film is. This film could quite possibly be one of the most beautiful looking horror films I’ve seen in my life. Right up there with Dario Argento’s Suspiria because of how the colors over saturate the screen. I haven’t seen all of Mario Bava’s films (yet) but if the previews are any indication of what his films are like, then it seems he loves drenching the screen with the most vivid colors. I absolutely loved this about Bava’s films! They are eye candy! On Black Sabbath, colors are placed on the screen to enhance the mood and feeling of dread. To augment atmosphere. I thought Argento was so original with his usage of color, now I see where that comes from. Bava is the true master, Argento was simply following in his footsteps. It seems Bava has influenced a great deal of directors, including Wes Craven who obviously saw this film before writing the opening sequence for Scream (1996). That whole opening sequence with Drew Barrymore talking with the killer on the phone? Bava had already done it here with the opening segment called The Telephone. Bob Clark’s Black Christmas (1974) borrowed heavily from this segment as well. I think Tim Burton was also influenced from a visual standpoint by this film as well for Sleepy Hollow (1999).

Okay, this is the part of the review where I gush over the hot babes that Bava put on this film. Sorry but I just got to do it. And this is not from a chauvinist pig point of view, this is just from a normal regular dude’s point of view. My hats down to Bava for using such beautiful actresses on this film! I’m sure I’m not the only one who agrees with me because I was watching this one with a friend and we were both like “Wow! These chicks are so hot!” We kept doing this through out the duration of the whole film, because there’s beautiful women all through out the film. These actresses were more then just beautiful, these girls were the reason why the word “bombshell” was invented. I loved how Bava starts out “The Telephone” story with this sexy character (Michele Mercier playing Rosy) undressing. Bava cleverly manipulates the male audience to cheer. He wants guys to scream and holler for this beautiful girl. I loved how Bava orchestrated this scene because when Rosy picks up the phone, the killer tells her “your body is so beautiful, it could drive a man insane!” This scene is interesting because if you are a guy and you were cheering like a wolf for this beautiful girl, after you hear what the killer says you feel like a douche bag because you are thinking same way the killer was. Genius directing right there! Speakin of Bava's directing abilities, they guy sure can direct a suspenseful scene. I felt that this movie was directed by a true director, cleverly manipulating his audiences feelings and expectations. There is a scene in "The Drop of Water", where the tension is built by simply having a drop of water falling, and a light flashing on and off outside of the house. Bava completely understood the importance of mood, and atmosphere. He understood the importance of music and sound effects in a horror movie.

One thing that I noticed about this movie is the care and attention that was paid to the art direction and the lighting. The colors are beautiful, they compliment the mood and augment the atmosphere, but the art direction, the sets, are a beauty to look at. I love it when directors take special attention with the art direction, it makes everything that much more special. I felt as if extra care was put in making everything look perfect, every pot and pan, every chair, every flower vase, lamp, everything carefully selected and lit. Loved that about this movie. Its visually rich. Attention was paid to conveying a dreadful mood and atmosphere, specially on the last two stories; “The Wurdalak” and “The Drop of Water”. There are moments when the wind never stops howling! I loved that! The dead trees, the spooky forest, the fog, the old house…hell, this movie even has a scene with werewolves howling in the background! It was all pitch perfect! "The Wurdalak" felt like a true blue old school horror movie, augmented by Boris Karloff’s amazing performance. Speaking of Karloff, his performance on this one is one of his best. His Wurdalak was a truly evil character, but in a very non traditional and subtle way! This certainly is an unconventional take on vampirism.

What I loved the most about this movie is that its purely a horror movie. It had so many classy looking horror moments. I will go down as saying that I liked Black Sabbath more then any Dario Argento movie I have seen. I thought Argento was the master in using colors, but the truth is that Bava was the first and original, Argento was simply his pupil. This film felt like a horror comic book come to life, like an old EC horror comic, which I’m pretty sure is what Bava was going for when he made this one, with Boris Karloff as the crypt keeper. That was genius! Its also a film that was ahead of its time. Its very edgy playing with lesbian themes and even having children die! Black Sabbath is a true work of art and one of the best Italian horror films ever made. It’s one of the best horror films, period. Not to be missed.

Rating: 5 out of 5